“We’ve gone beyond the romance of all of this,” Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told CNBC shortly after the President announced he would not be enforcing Obamacare’s employer mandate or its income verification provisions. “The makeup and lipstick are off. People are waking up to look at this bill. It is a serious pig.” But that was then. Now, three weeks later, Corker is singing a different tune. “Oh, I think it’s a silly effort,” Corker told MSNBC Tuesday about conservative plans to either defund or delay Obamacare in the coming continuing resolution to keep the federal government running through September 2014.

“I don’t look at that as very courageous,” Corker continued. “Most of us see through it and realize that these people are really just taking themselves out of the debate.” But the only person taking himself out of the debate on the most important issue of the day is Corker and others in the Republican pantheon who would surrender to Obama without a fight. First, there is little doubt that Obama’s unilateral decisions to delay the Obamacare employer mandate and the law’s income verification requirement were illegal. As Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, told the New York Times, “this was the law. How can they change the law?”